Trade unions to join hands with desperate finance companies’ depositors to demand justice
File picture of aggrieved depositors outside the Supreme Court during a hearing of their appeal
Trade unions are to join hands with distressed depositors of failed finance companies to take their plight to the people in an impending warning to the government to resolve these issues before it becomes a country-wide issue.
Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU) General Secretary Sylvester Jayakody made this call while speaking to the Business Times on the sidelines of a media briefing on Wednesday by the Independent Organization to Protect The Finance Depositors (Guaranteed) Ltd. The event was held at the CMU’s Bala Tampoe auditorium near Kollupitiya.
While Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa around a month ago has assured that these affected depositors would be paid another round of Rs. 500,000 in addition to the earlier Rs. 600,000 each, the meeting was to demand the government to grant this Rs. 500,000 forthwith.
Depositors of the Finance Co (TFC) are in an angry mood as the Central Bank (CB) is seeking an order from the Commercial High Court to liquidate the company and the hearing has been fixed for March 30.
The media briefing was to demand the government to pay the promised Rs 5 lakhs and to stop the liquidation process immediately. Sarath Athukorale, Chief Organiser of the TFC depositors Association told this newspaper that he has been in constant contact with Ajith Nivard Cabraal, State Minister of Finance and the State Minister has assured that the payment Rs. 500,000 will be made.
A written order has been made from the Prime Minister to commence the payment process by March 15.
In the meantime, Mr. Jayakody said the swindling of the depositors’ hard earned money is a dastardly crime and there is a sinister attempt to grab the massive amount of money by some powerful people apparently from the government and this sinister attempt must be stopped.
He said that not only the distressed depositors of TFC, but they plan to rally round all the depositors of the failed finance companies and would eventually mobilise the entire workforce of the country to sustain the depositors’ relentless struggle to get their money back.
Mr. Jayakody said that they have an organisation called ‘Power of Voting People’ which involved the state sector and the private sector and there is another organisation called ‘Public Property and Human Rights Protection Centre’ and assured that they are poised to mobilise all the members of these organisations and the entire workforce of the country in protecting these aggrieved depositors.
“All these organisations are in solidarity with our organisation and their support would definitely be forthcoming,” he said.
At the media briefing Mr. Athukorale said that there are 10,072 depositors and the deposits involved would be nearly Rs. 16 billion. Almost all of them are senior citizens and as the liquidation would now take at least 15 years by then all of them would likely be dead. They question as to whether this is the way to treat these distressed depositors sympathetically.
For the sudden sinister moves of the authorities, they suspect that there is some mysterious reasons as they indicated that TFC has been functioning well as at February 15, 2019 and asked why the TFC collected a massive amount of money from the depositors and thus they question the motive of this sudden move to have the company liquidated.
They point out that TFC unlike other failed finance companies, is administered by a CB-approved Board of Directors.
The attitude of the CB is ridiculous since while the government or the Prime Minister has taken a decision to pay all these depositors to pay at the rate of Rs. 500,000 each, the CB is seeking to liquate this finance company.
| Distressed depositors say assets being sold through the ‘back’ door | |
| While number of depositors, many elderly and some over 80 years, in the failed finance companies are still clamouring to get their money back, they have learnt with agony and distress that some of the very valuable properties belonging to the two companies – F&G Poverty Developer and Real Estate, are being plundered by outsiders by acquiring them forcibly with false documents. Many of these sick depositors have died due to the inability to pay their medical bills which hitherto were paid by the income they earned as interest on their deposits. Some of these depressed depositors who still await more than 10 years to get their money back indicated that the value of the properties was over Rs. 6 billion more than 10 years ago. They indicated that present values would be 10 to 15 times higher, now. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa earlier assured these depositors that these valuable properties and assets belonging to these failed finance companies would be acquired and sold to pay back the depositors ’dues. Some of the assets enumerated by these disgruntled depositors are: Fingara International Cricket Academy, The Regency Apartments – Kalubowila, Dehiwala; “Kingsgrove” Apartments – Nugegoda; Metro Central Shopping Complex – Malabe; “Fingate” Apartments (Phase – 1) Boralesgamuwa and “Wood Grove Villas”- Malabe. As such these depositors urge the authorities to take immediate action to safeguard the properties and assets of depositors of these two companies before any more disastrous happenings that puts their investments in jeopardy. |